The first day of school brings excitement and anxieties to many
students and parents across the country. But put yourself in the
shoes of a parent who had been hoping to send their child to a safe
and effective school-only to have the means for doing so suddenly
removed and being forced to re-enroll that child in a public school
system where nearly one in eight children reports being assaulted
with a weapon. That's the situation that parents of 216
Washington, D.C. children faced when they received a letter from
the Obama administration earlier this year telling them that their
children's Opportunity Scholarships were being revoked. For many of
these parents, the scholarships were their only hope of getting
their child into a safe learning environment. Now, like
thousands of other D.C. residents, many of these parents are facing
the anxiety of sending their children off to crime-ridden D.C.
public schools each day.

On Friday, the Heritage Foundation and the Lexington Institute
released a new Center for Data Analysis Report on school safety in
the District of Columbia. According to data obtained through a
Freedom of Information Act request of the D.C. Metropolitan Police
Department, police responded to more than 900 calls to 911
reporting violent incidents at the addresses of D.C. public schools
and more than 1,300 events concerning property crimes.

While one should use these data with care when comparing the
relative safety of public, charter, and private schools, this data
set shows that a drastically higher rate of calls were made from
D.C. public schools. The report also found that many of the
216 students who were recently denied Opportunity Scholarships are
now assigned to attend public schools with high rates of crime and
violence.

The new Heritage Foundation-Lexington Institute report is
getting noticed in the media:

In an editorial on Friday, the Washington Post urged
President Obama to add this new report to his summer reading list,
and asked the administration and Congress to reconsider its
decision to phase-out the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship
program.

Washington Examiner columnist Jonetta Rose Barras highlighted
the findings in her column on Monday. She questioned why
the District school system's official reports show much fewer
incidents of violence and crime.